Topic: General

This week on the AppleInsider podcast, Victor and Neil discuss Apple's continued work in artificial intelligence and cars, the rumored "iPhone 7s," and Neil's reviews of Powerbeats3 headphones and the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar.

Gene Munster, one of the most well known Apple analysts in the world, is leaving investment giant Piper Jaffray to start a venture capital firm specializing in AR/VR solutions, artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission on Thursday announced plans to mete out some $88 million to more than 2.7 million current and former AT&T customers who were affected by "mobile cramming," a scheme that added unwanted third-party service charges to their monthly phone bills.

Potentially beating Apple to the punch in some regards, Samsung's next flagship -- the Galaxy S8 -- will allegedly have an edge-to-edge, bezel-free display in all forms, and omit a physical home button in favor of a "virtual" one embedded in the glass.

Stars John Hodgman, Justin Long and the ad team responsible for Apple's 'Mac vs. PC' campaign -- launched in conjunction with the Intel Mac -- recently got together and talked about the evolution of the concept, other celebrity ad campaigns proposed and scuttled, and the difficulties of working with perfectionist Steve Jobs.

In one of the first pieces of documentation proving Apple's investigation into autonomous vehicles, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Thursday published a patent application describing a basic collision avoidance system that could one day serve as the underpinnings of a self-driving car telemetry solution.

An Apple invention published Thursday fleshes out the folding iPhone concept revealed in a separate patent grant last week, adding features like a wraparound display and touch sensitive structures to all external surfaces.

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group officially ratified the Bluetooth 5 standard on Wednesday, meaning Apple's next iPhone and iPad models could boast wireless accessory connectivity up to four times the distance of current specification devices at double the speed.

Although technically refusing to repatriate its international revenue to avoid taxes, Apple is actually keeping much of it in the U.S. in the form of bonds -- and generating interest in the process, a report pointed out on Wednesday.

Wireless carrier T-Mobile has started a beta of Digits -- a service that allows multiple phone numbers to be utilized in conjunction on one device, or one phone number to be shared across multiple devices on a carrier-level. The company recommends, however, that beta participants disable iMessage while using it.

In an invitation-only meeting at Tuesdays Neural Information Processing Systems conference, Apple's head of machine learning broke down Apple's specific goals for its artificial intelligence developments, and detailed where it feels it has an advantage of its competitors, giving a rare look at Apple's research process.

Apple's primary assembly partner, Foxconn, will soon invest in expanding its U.S. operations, the latter company said on Wednesday, apparently following in the steps of a similar SoftBank announcement.

Apple on Tuesday unveiled its "Best of" selections for 2016, highlighting the year's most popular apps, TV shows, movies, e-books and other content sold across the company's various digital storefronts.